What treasonable felons, who do everything to show disdain for Nigeria, their home country, know how to do well is to openly flaunt their loyalty, usually to their imperfect ethnic cleavages while pretending that they genuinely love the country. No matter how hard Benjamin Obiajulu Aduba tries to pretend in his recent Nigeria Village Square publication that his is an honest and objective, constructive suggestions, a logical and rational lift of the veil to do a true test of his intentions, shows that he too is one of the Igbo disloyal and saucy, out rightly disrespectful crowd that has benefited from the sale of a property belonging to the people and the government of Nigeria.
Who is the culprit in this scandalous broad daylight stealing? He is the now-exposed, thoroughly disgraced but often vain Maryland lawyer, Mr. Emeka Ugownye. The issue at stake (for which Mr. Ugwonye, operating in locked toes with others as Mr. Emeke Asiwe, who maintains a supposed news website known as huhuonline.com and owner of the Biafran-inspired, poorly edited blog, republicreport.com, Carlisle Umunnah), for which they want the entire Embassy to crash, is the shameless stealing by Ugwonye.
The tool so whimsically deployed with such deep ferocity in this matter has been a combination of braggadocio and some empty pretence to competence and logical reasoning with faulty conclusions and broad fallacies.
From the style of this contributor, I suspect that he is no less a person than the thief who was caught red-handed himself, Emeka Ugwonye. I compared between the style deployed here and the fact that he openly used in nailing Emeke Asiwe, the discredited so-called Harvard Alumnus, as curiously wearing a similitude of a point-by-point analysis.
What are the points for which Ugwonye, Carlisle and this hidden man-Friday of theirs want the ambassador kicked-out? Ugwonye, after selling a Nigerian property for $25 million, was given a tax refund of $1.5 million on behalf of the Embassy which he pocketed and subsequently refused to communicate with his client. In this case, Ambassador Obiozor, an Igbo who held forth at the time did not demand payment from Ugwonye. And from what has lately emerged, it was not impossible that he was given a fraction of the stolen in order to hush him up. And the layers of secrecy and cover-up was sealed with the patronage provided by the then foreign affairs minister, Mr. Ojomelukwe Madueke.
When retired General Oluwole Rotimi assumed office as the ambassador to the United States, the matter was brought his attention by every Nigerian diplomat in Washington, D.C. Rotimi acted by demanding full refund from Ugwonye. Ambassador Rotimi acted as a soldier-diplomat. He failed only in allowing ethnic jingoists to get under his skin and he had to respond to a loquacious, abrasive and hapless Ojo Madueke, as a sore loser who was still smarting from the blow of defeat suffered as a Biafran during the Nigerian Civil War. It was a punch well delivered from Ambassador Rotimi. The only problem was that Rotimi should have found an errand boy to assist him in firing the decisive shot.
After Ambassador Rotimi was moved, both professors Tunde Adeniran and Ade Adefuye were screened specifically for the ambassadorial position to the United States. At the screening level, Adefuye slightly edged-out Tunde Adeniran. Adeniran was picked, however, because he was and still remains a strong Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) stalwart in Nigeria. Adeniran had paid his dues as a loyal party man. He built the PDP, funded the Party and was its governorship candidate in Ekiti State, when no one wanted to embrace the party in 1998/99. He also served as a minister that was not tainted and later he had served as Nigeria’s ambassador to Germany.
Adefuye on the other hand has been a first-grade diplomat and professor of International Affairs. He had served as a high commissioner to Jamaica, was deputy high commissioner to United Kingdom and worked for his country on NEPAD, the Commonwealth and the African Union.
In short, both Adefuye and Adeniran were no mean men. The hand of fate was what snatched the appointment as ambassador to the US from Adefuye. But the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua later saw through what was an oversight and deliberate manipulation of the process and decided to stick with his official first choice for the job: Anthony Ade Adefuye.
Ade Adefuye, therefore, was never an accidental choice. And the strict process of his emergence was again respected with his recent affirmation for a second term by President Goodluck Jonathan. Dr. Jonathan has also firmly demonstrated that he believes in continuity and does not pander to distractive low echoes of cyber champions like Ugwonye and company.
Nevertheless, there was an interesting interregnum before Adefuye resumed work in Washington D.C. Ugwonye allegedly went to town to tell whoever wanted to hear that the newly appointed ambassador was one hungry university teacher. Those who heard him and brought the matter to the attention of the media quoted him as saying that he would bribe him and compromise him with $200,000 part of the proceeds by the hijacked United States Internal Revenue Service refunds.
Hard working journalists who wanted closure to the matter and punishment served to the Maryland lawyer who acted in breach of trust in handling Nigerians’ money asked the ambassador if he had any such disgraceful agreement with Ugwonye. A shocked Adefuye said he had never heard of Ugwonye and called for the file. After a careful study he was convinced that the Embassy and the Foreign Affiairs Ministry in Nigeria had enough grounds to institute litigations. The matter has seen Ugwonye behaving like a true Smart Alec. He even tried to get deportation proceedings against Nigerian journalists who tried to report his alleged criminality. How he became the lawyer to the Embassy has never been revealed either by former Ambassador Obiozor and recycled Ojo Madueke, who has again been recycled as an ambassadorial appointee.
And now to the recommendation of marshall options, suggested by OBIANUJU that Adefuye should be invited home and detained! Can this man be serious? Is this an attemot to reduce Nigeria to a Banana Republic? Could lied to this be the outburst of some demented mind that worked under any of our evil military dictators of the past? So what would be the crime of Adefuye? Does it constitute a crime for somebody who works for the interest of of the people and the government of the country to launch after a felonious lawyer who has desperately lied to Nigerians to cover his shame? Adefuye is one of the few accessible diplomats that Nigeria has ever had.
The question that must be answered also is that is it wrong for Adefuye to stand upright against a criminal that bragged like a Goliath to annihilate him careerwise by attempting to offer him bribe? I think any honest public servant, whether Nigerian or not, would do everything possible to stand, like Adefuye has done, not capitulating but going after him like the vengeance of God in a duly constituted law court.
The fact that one man wants to be clever by engaging internet blackmail and legal intimidation against reputable Nigerians still does not make him right or righteous. He was able to destroy Emeke Asiwe because than one had shady secrets and shared them with him. And concerning access to facts of activities of the Embassy in D.C., it is not true that Ugwonye, Asiwe, Umunnah or Sahara Reporters’ Omoyele Showore know more than the average Nigerian. Any seeker of the light would have access to the same information they all have. Also, the report that Asiwe took as if it was his own was never his own in the first instance. The story was originally scooped by sharpedgenews.com.
Professional colleagues have sat down with this writer as an experienced investigative news reporter of close to twenty-two years, there is nothing on Asiwe’s news website that shows that he is capable of doing a good report. In fact, if I were any of those advertisers who patronize him, I would pull my adverts away from his brand of journalism.
You cannot compare the content and style of his reports with that of saharareporters.com or sharpedgenews.com, pointblanknews.com, africanexaminer.com, etc.
Now as for Carlisle Umunnah’s republicreports.com, I have tried not to say much because he does not deserve to be elevated to the status of a serious reporter. He pursues a dead cause of Biafranism even though he was not there to fire a single shot during the civil war. Igbos may have genuine disaffection but the battle should not be left to irredentist ethnicists like Carlisle Umunnah.
So, whether it is Asiwe, Ugwonye, Umunnah or the writer of this distasteful piece here on Nigeria Village Square, they are all fighting against Nigerians, its people and government and not Adefuye. If anyone is tired of being subordinate to Adefuye, such a person should leave the job with honor, resign in integrity. The insidious things that Ugwonye and Co. write and publish in the internet about Adefuye are uncharitable and they do not benefit the nation in any way.
I have just read somewhere that Adefuye is traveling in Nigeria to attend the commissioning of an American company in Agbara, Ogun State. If he is not allowed to come back to his duty post, then I would believe that his detractors have a listening ear in Aso Rock. But if he comes back, then it would mean that his enemies are fighting a lost battle. I read of the new bilateral developments between Nigerian and American. I choose to celebrate Adefuye as an authentic and quintessential Nigerian and indeed, a global hero.
- Roy Connie is a Nigerian journalist based in Maryland, USA.